Contents

In late 1888, Van Gogh began to experience a mental breakdown, cutting off part of his ear.[2] He stayed in hospital for a month,[2] but was not fully healed and in April 1889 he checked himself into an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he remained for a year.[1] When he was released in 1890, Van Gogh's brother Theo was searching for a home for the artist upon his release from an asylum at Saint-Rémy. Upon the recommendation of Camille Pissarro, a former patient of the doctor who told Theo of Gachet's interests in working with artists, Theo sent Vincent to Gachet's second home in Auvers.[3]

Vincent van Gogh's first impression of Gachet was unfavorable. Writing to Theo he remarked:
"I think that we must not count on Dr. Gachet at all. First of all, he is sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much, so that's that. Now when one blind man leads another blind man, don't they both fall into the ditch?"[4]
However, in a letter dated two days later to their sister Wilhelmina, he relayed, "I have found a true friend in Dr. Gachet, something like another brother, so much do we resemble each other physically and also mentally."[5]

Van Gogh had a very prolific spell during his stay with Gachet, producing more than seventy paintings,[6] including the portraits of Gachet.[7]

Van Gogh's thoughts returned several times to the painting by Eugène Delacroix of Torquato Tasso in the madhouse. After a visit with Paul Gauguin to Montpellier to see Alfred Bruyas's collection in the Musée Fabre, Van Gogh wrote to Theo, asking if he could find a copy of the lithograph after the painting.[8] Three and a half months earlier, he had been thinking of the painting as an example of the sort of portraits he wanted to paint: "But it would be more in harmony with what Eugène Delacroix attempted and brought off in his Tasso in Prison, and many other pictures, representing a real man. Ah! portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come."[9]

Van Gogh wrote to his sister in 1890 about the painting:

I've done the portrait of M. Gachet with a melancholy expression, which might well seem like a grimace to those who see it... Sad but gentle, yet clear and intelligent, that is how many portraits ought to be done... There are modern heads that may be looked at for a long time, and that may perhaps be looked back on with longing a hundred years later.[10]

The portraits of Dr. Gachet were completed just six weeks before Van Gogh shot himself and died from his wounds.[11]

Van Gogh painted Gachet resting his right elbow on a red table, head in hand. Two yellow books as well as the purple medicinal herb foxglove are displayed on the table. The foxglove in the painting is a plant from which digitalis is extracted for the treatment of certain heart complaints, perhaps an attribute of Gachet as a physician.[6]

Van Gogh Self-portrait

The doctor's "sensitive face", which Van Gogh wrote to Paul Gauguin carried "the heartbroken expression of our time", is described by Robert Wallace as the portrait's focus.[12] Wallace described the ultramarine blue coat of Gachet, set against a background of hills painted a lighter blue, as highlighting the "tired, pale features and transparent blue eyes that reflect the compassion and melancholy of the man."[12] Van Gogh himself said this expression of melancholy "would seem to look like a grimace to many who saw the canvas".[10]

L'Arlesienne (Madame Ginoux)

With the Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh sought to create a "modern portrait", which he wrote to his sister "impassions me most—much, much more than all the rest of my métier."[5] Elaborating on this quote, Van Gogh scholar Jan Hulsker noted "... much later generations experience it not only as psychologically striking, but also as a very unconventional and 'modern' portrait."[13] He also wrote, "My self-portrait is done in nearly the same way but the blue is the fine blue of the Midi, and the clothes are a light lilac,"[5] which would refer to one of his final self-portraits painted in September the year previous.[13]

Van Gogh also wrote to Wilhelmina regarding the Portraits of Madame Ginoux he painted first in Arles in 1888 and again in February 1890 while at the hospital in Saint-Rémy. The second set were styled after the portrait of the same figure by Gauguin, and Van Gogh described Gachet's enthusiasm upon viewing the version painted earlier that year, which the artist had carried with him to the home in Auvers.[13] Van Gogh subsequently carried compositional elements from this portrait to that of Dr. Gachet, including the table-top with two books and pose of the figure with head leaning on one hand.[13]

First sold in 1897 by Van Gogh's sister-in-law for 300 francs, the painting was subsequently bought by Paul Cassirer (1904), Kessler (1904), and Druet (1910). In 1911, the painting was acquired by the Städel (Städtische Galerie) in Frankfurt, Germany and hung there until 1933, when the painting was put in a hidden room. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda confiscated the work in 1937 as part of its campaign to rid Germany of so-called degenerate art. Hermann Göring, through his agent Sepp Angerer, sold it to Franz Koenigs in Paris, together with 'The quarry of Bibemus' by Cézanne and Daubigny's Garden, the latter also by van Gogh.[14] In August 1939, Koenigs transported the paintings from Paris to Knoedler's in New York. Siegfried Kramarsky fled to Lisbon in November 1939 and arrived January 1940 in New York. The paintings ended up in Kramarsky's custody, where the work was often lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[15]

Kramarsky's family put the painting up for auction at Christie's New York on May 15, 1990, where it became famous for Ryoei Saito, honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., paying US$82.5 million for it ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission), making it then the world's most expensive painting.[15] Two days later Saito bought Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette for nearly as much: $78.1 million at Sotheby's. The 75-year-old Japanese businessman briefly caused a scandal when he said he would have the Van Gogh painting cremated with him after his death, though his aides later said Saito's threatening to burn the masterpiece was just an expression of intense affection for it.

Though he later said he would consider giving the painting to the Japanese government or a museum, no information has been made public about the exact location and ownership of the portrait since his death in 1996.[16] Reports in 2007 said the painting was sold a decade earlier to the Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flöttl.[17] Flöttl, in turn, had reportedly been forced by financial reversals to sell the painting to parties as yet unknown.

There is a second version of the portrait which was owned by Gachet himself. In the early 1950s, along with the remainder of his personal collection of Post-Impressionist paintings, it was bequeathed to the Republic of France by his heirs.[18][19]

The authenticity of the second version has often come under scrutiny due to a number of factors.
In a letter dated 3 June 1890 to Theo, Vincent mentions his work on the portrait, which includes "... a yellow book and a foxglove plant with purple flowers."[20] The subsequent letter sent to Wilhelmina also mentions "yellow novels and a foxglove flower."[5] As the yellow novels are absent from the second version of the painting, the letters clearly reference only the original version.
Dr. Gachet, as well as his son, also named Paul, were amateur artists themselves. Along with original works, they often made copies of the Post-Impressionist paintings in the elder Gachet's collection, which included not only works by Van Gogh, but Cézanne, Monet, Renoir and others. These copies were self-declared, and signed under the pseudonyms Paul and Louis Van Ryssel, yet the practice has thrown the entire Gachet collection into question, including the doctor's portrait.[21]
Additionally, some critics have noted the sheer number of works to emerge from Van Gogh's stay in Auvers, roughly eighty in seventy days, and questioned whether he painted them all himself.[18]

Partly in response to these accusations, the Musée d'Orsay, which holds the second version of the Gachet portrait as well as the other works originally owned by the doctor, held an exhibit in 1999 of his former collection.[18] In addition to the paintings by Van Gogh and the other Post-Impressionist masters, the exhibition was accompanied by works of the elder and younger Gachet.[22] Prior to the exhibition, the museum commissioned infrared, ultraviolet and chemical analysis of eight works each by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and the Gachets for comparison. The studies showed pigments on the Van Gogh paintings faded differently from the Gachet copies.[22] It also emerged that the Gachet paintings were drawn with outlines and filled with paint, whereas the Van Gogh and Cézanne works were painted directly to canvas.[21] Van Gogh also used the same rough canvas for all his paintings at Auvers, with the exception of The Church at Auvers (whose authenticity has never been questioned).[18]
In addition to scientific evidence, defenders say that while the second version of the Portrait of Dr. Gachet is often considered to be of lesser quality than many of Van Gogh's works in Arles, it is superior in technique to anything painted by either the elder or younger Gachet.[21][22]

Portrait of Dr Gachet with Pipe, May 1890etching, 18×15cm (Van Gogh's only etching)

Dutch scholar J.B. de la Faille, who compiled the first exhaustive catalog of Van Gogh works in 1928, noted in his manuscript, "We consider this painting a very weak replica of the preceding one, missing the piercing look" of the original. Editors of the posthumous 1970 edition of Faille's book disagreed with his assessment, stating they considered both works to be of high quality.[23]

Van Gogh, introduced to etching by Gachet, made the etching Portrait of Doctor Gachet in 1890. Gachet and Van Gogh discussed creating a series of southern France themes but that never happened. This was the one and only etching, also known as L'homme à la pipe (Man with a pipe), that Van Gogh ever made. Van Gogh's brother, Theo, who received an impression of the etching, called it "a true painter's etching. No refinement in the execution, but a drawing on metal." It is a different pose than that in Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, owned by Musée d'Orsay. The National Gallery of Canada finds that "The undulating flow of the line is typical of the expressive quality of Van Gogh's late style." The impression owned by the National Gallery is from one of the 60 printings following Van Gogh's death by Dr. Gachet's son, Paul Gachet Jr. Gachet's collector's stamp appears on the bottom edge of the print.[24]

1.
Vincent van Gogh
–
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings and his suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty. Born into a family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling and he turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881 and his younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, in 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and his paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include trees, cypresses, wheat fields. Van Gogh suffered from episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor and he spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris and his depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later, Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves. The most comprehensive source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincents thoughts, Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. Theo kept all of Vincents letters to him, Vincent kept few of the letters he received, after both had died, Theos widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913, the majority were published in 1914, Vincents letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a diary-like intimacy, and read in parts like autobiography

2.
Oil painting
–
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, the choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium, the oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages, Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. In recent years, water miscible oil paint has come to prominence and, to some extent, water-soluble paints contain an emulsifier that allows them to be thinned with water rather than paint thinner, and allows very fast drying times when compared with traditional oils. Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the subject onto the canvas with charcoal or thinned paint, Oil paint is usually mixed with linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits, or other solvents to make the paint thinner, faster or slower-drying. A basic rule of oil paint application is fat over lean and this means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the painting will crack. This rule does not ensure permanence, it is the quality and type of oil leads to a strong. There are many media that can be used with the oil, including cold wax, resins. These aspects of the paint are closely related to the capacity of oil paint. Traditionally, paint was transferred to the surface using paintbrushes. Oil paint remains wet longer than other types of artists materials, enabling the artist to change the color. At times, the painter might even remove a layer of paint. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a time while the paint is wet, Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch within a span of two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year, art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old

3.
Paris
–
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town

4.
Netherlands
–
The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously

5.
Paul Gachet
–
Paul-Ferdinand Gachet was a French physician most famous for treating the painter Vincent van Gogh during his last weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise. Gachet was a supporter of artists and the Impressionist movement. He was a painter, signing his works Paul van Ryssel, referring to his birthplace. Born and raised in Lille, his family moved to Mechelen and he qualified for a B. A. at the University of Paris and then worked at the mental hospitals of Bicêtre and Salpêtrière. In 1858 he received a degree for his thesis Étude sur la Mélancolie. He returned to Paris and set up a private practice and he knew Gustave Courbet, Champfleury, Victor Hugo and later Paul Cézanne. He was a friend of the chemist Henri Nestlé and prescribed Nestlés new powdered milk supplement to some of his child patients and he spent much time with Charles Méryon after the etchers committal to Charenton. He oversaw Auguste Renoirs recovery from pneumonia in 1882 and he advised Édouard Manet against the amputation of his leg. However, Manet did not follow this advice, Gachets tomb is situated in section 52 of Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Vincents brother, Theo van Gogh, thought that Gachets background, very soon after he began seeing Gachet, however, Vincent began to doubt the doctors usefulness. Vincent described Gachet as, sicker than I am, I think, Gachet has come in for much criticism over the years regarding Van Goghs suicide after ten weeks of consultation. However Van Gogh was either unable or unwilling to follow his doctors advice to cut back on alcohol, according to Arnold, there was not much else available to any physician of the day which could have reversed the course of Vincents illness. Gachet was friends with and treated Pissarro, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne and Goeneutte and he had amassed one of the largest impressionist art collections in Europe before he died in 1909. Paul Gachet at Find a Grave

6.
Auvers-sur-Oise
–
Auvers-sur-Oise is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 27.2 km from the centre of Paris and it is associated with several famous artists, the most prominent being Vincent van Gogh. Daubignys house is now a museum where one can see paintings by the artist, his family, if you walk along the river from Auvers toward Pontoise you can see a number of views which figured in the paintings of Pissarro. During the 20th century artists continued to frequent Auvers, including Henri Rousseau, Otto Freundlich, the COBRA artist Corneille spent his last years in the village and is buried a few meters from Vincent van Gogh. On 1 August 1948, 17% of the territory of Auvers-sur-Oise was detached, Dr. Paul Gachet lived in Auvers-sur-Oise. He was acquainted with the artists of the time. Through this connection, Vincent van Gogh moved to Auvers to be treated by him, Gachet befriended Van Gogh and was the subject of two portraits, one of which, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, was sold at auction for over $80m in 1990. Van Gogh died by a gunshot to the chest, the room on the upper floor of the Auberge Ravoux where he died has been preserved, although no furniture remains. Auvers-sur-Oise is the resting place of both Vincent and his brother Theo van Gogh, who died six months later. Auvers-sur-Oise in art Auvers-sur-Oise is served by two stations on the Transilien Paris – Nord suburban rail line, Chaponval and Auvers-sur-Oise. Communes of the Val-dOise department Auvers during the time of Vincent van Gogh INSEE Association of Mayors of the Val d’Oise Official website The Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh

7.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
–
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt. The first of two portraits Klimt painted of Bloch-Bauer, it has referred to as the final and most fully representative work of his golden phase. Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, near Vienna in Austria-Hungary and he attended the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts before taking on commissions with his brother, Ernst, and a fellow-student Franz von Matsch from 1879. Klimt worked in Vienna during the Belle Époque, as the city witnessed a cultural flowering unparalleled elsewhere. In 1897 he was a member and president of the Wiener Sezession. By 1900 he was the portrait painter of the wives of the largely Jewish Viennese bourgeoisie. In 1903 Klimt visited Ravenna, northern Italy, where the mosaics that decorated the churches impressed him. Adele Bauer was from a wealthy Jewish Viennese family and her father was a director of the Wiener Bankverein, seventh largest bank in Austria-Hungary, and the general director of Oriental Railroads. In the late 1890s Adele met Klimt, and may have begun a relationship with him, adeles parents arranged a marriage with Ferdinand Bloch, a banker and sugar manufacturer. Ferdinand was older than his fiancée and at the time of the marriage in December 1899, she was 18, the couple, who had no children, both changed their surnames to Bloch-Bauer. Socially well-connected, Adele brought together writers, politicians and intellectuals for a salon at her home, the couple shared a love of art, and collected and patronised several artists, primarily nineteenth-century Viennese works. Ferdinand also had a passion for porcelain and by 1934 his collection was over 400 pieces. In 1903 Ferdinand purchased his first Klimt work from the artist, Klimt took three years to complete the painting, preliminary drawings for it date from 1903/4. It measures 54 x 54 and is made of oil and gold on canvas, showing elaborate, in her will, it is claimed that Adele Bloch-Bauer asked her husband to consider donating his Klimt paintings to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death. She died in 1925 from meningitis, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 in the action known as the Anschluss, her widower fled to Prague and subsequently to Zürich. Most of his properties in Austria, including his Klimt paintings, were looted, in 1941, it was acquired by the Austrian state gallery, housed in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer died in November 1945 in Zürich, in his 1945 testament, he designated his nephew and nieces, including Maria Altmann, as the heirs of his estate, which included his Klimt paintings. After a court battle, binding arbitration by a panel of Austrian judges established in 2006 that Maria Altmann was the owner of this

8.
Camille Pissarro
–
Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54, in 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the pivotal figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Cézanne said he was a father for me, a man to consult and a little like the good Lord, and he was also one of Gauguins masters. Renoir referred to his work as revolutionary, through his portrayals of the common man. Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions and he acted as a father figure not only to the Impressionists but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was born on 10 July 1830 on the island of St. Thomas to Frederick and his father was of Portuguese Jewish descent and held French nationality. His mother was from a French-Jewish family from the island of St. Thomas and his father was a merchant who came to the island from France to deal with the hardware store of a deceased uncle and married his widow. The marriage caused a stir within St. Thomas small Jewish community because she was married to Fredericks uncle. In subsequent years his four children were forced to attend the primary school. Upon his death, his will specified that his estate be split equally between the synagogue and St. Thomas Protestant church, when Camille was twelve his father sent him to boarding school in France. He studied at the Savary Academy in Passy near Paris, while a young student, he developed an early appreciation of the French art masters. Monsieur Savary himself gave him a grounding in drawing and painting and suggested he draw from nature when he returned to St. Thomas. However, his father preferred he work in his business, giving him a job working as a cargo clerk and he took every opportunity during those next five years at the job to practise drawing during breaks and after work. When he turned twenty-one, Danish artist Fritz Melbye, then living on St. Thomas, inspired Pissarro to take on painting as a profession, becoming his teacher. Pissarro then chose to leave his family and job and live in Venezuela and he drew everything he could, including landscapes, village scenes, and numerous sketches, enough to fill up multiple sketchbooks. In 1855 he moved back to Paris where he working as assistant to Anton Melbye. In Paris he worked as assistant to Danish painter Anton Melbye and he also studied paintings by other artists whose style impressed him, Courbet, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-François Millet, and Corot

9.
Torquato Tasso
–
He suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe. Born in Sorrento, Torquato was the son of Bernardo Tasso, a nobleman of Bergamo and an epic and lyric poet of considerable fame in his day, and his wife Porzia de Rossi, a noblewoman from Naples. His father had for years been secretary in the service of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno. When the prince of Salerno came into collision with the Spanish government of Naples, being subsequently outlawed and deprived of his hereditary fiefs and he was proclaimed a rebel to the state, together with his son Torquato, and his patrimony was sequestered. These things happened during the boys childhood, in 1552 Torquato was living with his mother and his only sister Cornelia at Naples, pursuing his education under the Jesuits, who had recently opened a school there. The precocity of intellect and the fervour of the boy attracted general admiration. At the age of eight he was already famous, soon after this date he was allowed to join his father, who then resided in great poverty and without occupation in exile in Rome. News reached them in 1556 that Porzia Tasso had died suddenly and mysteriously at Naples and her husband was firmly convinced that she had been poisoned by her brother with the object of getting control over her property. As it subsequently happened, Porzias estate never descended to her son, Tassos father was a poet by predilection and a professional courtier. Therefore, when an opening at the court of Urbino was offered in 1557, the young Torquato, a handsome and brilliant lad, became the companion in sports and studies of Francesco Maria della Rovere, heir to the duke of Urbino. At Urbino a society of cultivated men pursued the aesthetic and literary studies which were then in vogue. Bernardo Tasso read cantos of his poem LAmadigi to the duchess and her ladies, or discussed the merits of Homer and Virgil, Trissino and Ariosto, with the dukes librarians and secretaries. Torquato grew up in an atmosphere of refined luxury and somewhat pedantic criticism, at Venice, where his father went to superintend the printing of his own epic, Amadigi, these influences continued. He found himself the pet and prodigy of a literary circle. But Bernardo had suffered in his own career so seriously from dependence on the Muses and the nobility, Torquato was sent to study law at Padua. Instead of applying himself to law, the young man bestowed all his attention upon philosophy, before the end of 1562, he had produced a twelve-canto epic poem called Rinaldo, which was meant to combine the regularity of the Virgilian with the attractions of the romantic epic. Nevertheless, its author was recognized as the most promising young poet of his time, the flattered father allowed the work to be printed, and, after a short period of study at Bologna, he consented to his sons entering the service of Cardinal Luigi dEste

This article refers to self portraits and portraits of Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890). It includes self-portraits, …

Image: Vincent Willem van Gogh 102

Painter on his way to work: Vincent van Gogh on the road to Montmajour August 1888 (F 448) Oil on canvas, 48 × 44 cm formerly Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Magdeburg, believed to have been destroyed by fire in World War II

Das Magdeburger Ehrenmal (the Magdeburg cenotaph), by Ernst Barlach was declared to be degenerate art due to the "deformity" and emaciation of the figures—corresponding to Nordau's theorized connection between "mental and physical degeneration."